AuthorTopic: Changes in 2011 (Read 6669 times)

During Futureman's visit to Zendrum HQ, Zengina hinted at some new developments at Zendrum Labs. Aye thought Aye might start this thread in the hopes that Inspector 109 or Zengina might provide some insight as to what is coming in the not too distant future, before the world ends in 1 year and 29 days!

Fair Winds and Following Seas,Pyrate

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Lost at sea with the Jolly Roger Zendrum!Pyrate Factoid: Black Bart Roberts was the most successful Pyrate of the Golden Age. He captured over 400 ships between 1720 and 1722.

Finding good sounds for the Zendrum in a roadworthy box has been an ongoing challenge since 1991 when we built our original invention. I’ve owned many pieces of electronic drum gear, but they always fell short of Zendrum’s high standard for quality and trouble-free performance. Even as sound improved over time, reliability got much worse. Gear failure got catastrophic and costly and unacceptable to me.

Enough Already...I had to build something specifically for my application - a VST player durable enough to bounce down the road for thousands of miles in a truck and still perform flawlessly, night after night. I started with a 2-space ATA rack case, so it's small, armored, and easy to pack. Every trick I’ve ever learned to speed set-up and tear-down, along with the best components for playing MIDI drums were used with one purpose in mind: Rock-solid reliability and ease of use onstage.

How...ZENDRIVE has a 40 gig solid-state hard drive and 4 gigs of fast RAM, dual core Pentium processor and a sound card with 8 audio outs to a custom patch bay. 8 separate lines to my mixer so I can tweak whatever drums I might need to- on the fly, or connect a mono or stereo out. Auto boot-up software so I don't even have to take a monitor or mouse. One button-push on/off, put the rack covers on, out to the truck in 5 minutes or less- Done. The point is- I can now forget about the gear and simply play music.

Why...I’ve always dreamed of hearing the sound from my 1937 RadioKing Slingerland kit while playing Zendrum. We’ve tuned, mic’d, sampled, chopped, edited, and produced finished mixes of this special kit (along with other drum treasures) into 16 instantly ready-to-play drumsets. This collection is the end result of our TRS drum sessions, recorded at legendary Southern Tracks studio here in Atlanta.

Going forward...I understand that having a tech support person who actually cares makes all the difference in customer satisfaction and our company’s reputation. We have decided to build computers that are reliable, fast, and strong. If your application calls for more memory or a larger rack or component configuration, we can also build to suit your needs. The same commitment we have always had to individual design in our Custom Shop will apply here.

If Aye be reading between the lines correctly, this new system, which Aye admit be a marvel of engineering, will not support any other sounds other than your Slingerland radio King set. Is this correct? Also, how much of me Pyrate Booty will this innovation cost the Olde Salt, (not to mention everyone else)?

Fair Winds and Following Seas,Pyrate

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Lost at sea with the Jolly Roger Zendrum!Pyrate Factoid: Black Bart Roberts was the most successful Pyrate of the Golden Age. He captured over 400 ships between 1720 and 1722.

The ZENDRIVE comes with Battery 3 installed. No monitor, keyboard, or mouse included.

It can run any other software you want to add yourself. BFD ECO, EZ Drummer, etc. It's simply a very fast, well-made computer.Our TRS library is what automatically boots up, but there are also 12 gigs of Battery sounds loaded in the internal drive as well.You can also sample your own sounds and play them in Battery... (we did!)

What makes ZENDRIVE so sturdy is the solid state drive.I've destroyed more than one spinning drive in my lifetime, so this is where the ZENDRIVE road-worthy aspect is most apparent. I purposefully dropped this unit many times and put thousands of truck miles on it to test the reliability of the build. Still boots up perfectly every time with one button push.

The way the standard ZENDRIVE is configured, you could load BFD ECO or EZ Drummer as well and still have space on the 40 gig SSD. There are three other size SSDs available from our Custom Shop for internal memory storage options.So in essence, you can choose how much memory you will need and we can build your ZENDRIVE to suit your application. We have added 2 eSATA ports to the patch panel so we can provide up to 3 TERABYTES of external rotational drive space if needed, or you can add the eSATA drives yourself later on to suit your purpose.

The point being that we can build whatever you want but we're not going to include a lot of extra clutter you may never use in the $1999 price.Right now, there is almost ZERO learning curve to this plug and play system.(MY kind of computer!)

For the e-drummer, it opens the door to sound expansion and mega-storage and will work simply and intuitively with any other existing MIDI device that outputs MIDI note messages.

For the Zendrummer, it allows for a wonderful experience the first day with room to grow and customize as needed with Zendrum's personal service, tech support, and quality build behind it. Most of you here know how seriously we back our work. This will be no exception. We will be there for you- as always.

This system sounds damn near perfect. Aye already have an eSata 1TB external. Aye may have to get one of these when Aye take in the Jolly roger ZX for a Z4 upgrade. Aye like the idea of almost no learning curve. With Futureman not being able to overwhelm the new system it sounds like there is zero latency. What kind of midi interface is included if any between the computer and the Zendrum?

Thanks for all the information. And keep up all the good things that Zedrum Corporate does for all of us.

Fair Winds and Following Seas,Pyrate

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Lost at sea with the Jolly Roger Zendrum!Pyrate Factoid: Black Bart Roberts was the most successful Pyrate of the Golden Age. He captured over 400 ships between 1720 and 1722.

Yeah Pyrate,I was growing old waiting on someone else to do this properly!

There is a MergeBrick inside that is connected to the Delta 1010 LT soundcard with the MIDI IN and audio outs.The card is actually Dolby 5 and 7 compatible as well, so I'll probably have to buy a home theatre now to ever use all the features...